by Gayle Eden
Archard was not done. After he came, and after she shakily cleaned herself. He put her on the sofa, to lay with her. He rubbed her to climax. Much kissing and nibbling went along with his fingers easing in and out.
* * * *
It was dark out. Val lay in his arms, although his eyes were closed, she knew he was not asleep.
“I didn’t know...any of this was possible.” She confessed in a whisper.
The hand on her stomach soothed. He said near her ear, “You didn’t have me.”
“Um.”
He murmured, “There’s more. Val?”
“What?”
“I didn’t imagine it half as good as it is with us.”
She smiled. She had pleased him.
He rose, propping his elbow up, head in his palm while that hand moved to sift through her tangled hair. Archard murmured, “Share a bath with me?”
She arched her chin up to look at him. “You mean…ask the servants to prepare one, this late…”
He was shaking his head. “I’ll prepare it.”
Val sat up and turned, regarding him in the rising moonlight. “All right.” She flushed though. “Is that something men like?”
“I have no idea.” He smiled a little. “It is something I’d like.”
“Very well.”
They arose, doused lamps after straightening the books and papers. Val liked his hand on her back as they went above. Once in the chambers, she lit candles while he prepared the bath, and then opened the window to the night air.
She undid the gown and stepped out of it, turning to find Archard leaning against the door to the bathing room, watching her. He reached out his hand.
Val went to him, trying not to feel self-conscious, reminding herself he had seen her body, been intimate with it.
He had a thick candle on the high window ledge in the bathing room. The huge brass tub was filled.
She climbed in whilst he was undressing. Going under and smoothing her hair back. The water scented with herbs, mint and something woodsy. Leaning against the edge, she watched him climb in, mentally shaking her head at the raw beauty of him. He put his feet by her hips, slid down and wet his own hair, smoothing it back.
Water made his skin glisten; candlelight gave the beads a glimmer that enhanced every defined muscle on him. Hair smoothed back, he leaned against his side and beckoned her to sit between his legs.
She did. In the next hour, Val let him wash her hair and rinse it. Closing her eyes and reveling in the feel of someone doing that. He massaged her nape, her shoulders, and kissed her skin between his abolitions.
She turned and got to her knees, washing his hair, smoothing the scented soap over his broad shoulders. Of mutual accord, they stood, the candle burning low, the room half shadowed with their bodies glistening, his golden, hers ivory, and washed each other.
There were sounds that aroused Val as much as the visual of him, and the hands that touched her. The trickle of water, glide of soap across skin, and the heady scent of herbs mingled with desire.
Her hair heavy and wet down her back, she held to his upper arms, her head back while he soaped and massaged her breasts. He would skim his big hands up her ribs, upwards, lifting the globes. After he rinsed them free of soap, he kissed and laved, rolled his tongue around her nipples.
Archard got to his knees to wash between her legs. The rinsing there came with his holding her curls apart so he could lave long, and tease the sensitive skin, with the tip of his tongue.
Breath heavy, measured, she stopped him and returned the favor, thus far having bathed him, touched him only with her hands. Val experimented on her own knees with his full, thick, sex.
A kiss upon the smooth head got her the ripple of his abdominal muscles, along with the feel of his hand almost too light in her hair. A few more touches of her lips to that wonderfully tender skin, and he sucked in his breath, the big thighs bunching and tense.
Peeking up, she skimmed her palms over those muscled thighs.
His head was hanging down, eyes, watching her, while wet hair dripped beads of water over his powerful chest. He witnessed her most intimate kisses with pale blue eyes aflame. The skin drew tight over his high cheekbones, and nostrils flared.
Val whispered, “Does that feel as good, as your tasting me?”
“Yes.” He answered through clinched white teeth.
She looked down, and began to kiss all around the crown softly. When her tongue came out with gentle licks, she heard sounds, half words, not English. With some hesitation, she rimmed her lips on the head.
His body jerked. Hips flexing instinctively before he hissed darkly, “Wait…wait...” His hands cupped her head, moving her back.
Val moved, just as his body seemed to nearly fall into the water.
She bit her lip, watching him half-lay, sprawled, with knees wide while his hand smoothed over his face several times. He dropped them to his thighs, looking at her, swallowing while he rubbed at the bunched muscles on his upper legs.
“Did I hurt you?”
“Absolutely—not,” he rasped, shook his head, his stare intense. Archard looked like he was going to say something, but then sat up, gradually stood, and stepped out of the tub.
“Come here.” He held the toweling.
She stepped out and allowed him to dry her. When he was done and drying himself, she took a smaller linen and squeezed water from her hair. Combing it, loose braiding next, she was watching him stand a moment after combing his own, back to her and rather glorious buttocks in view whilst he leaned a hand on the far wall as if gathering himself. Eventually he turned, his eyes skimming her before he doused the candle.
They entered the bedchamber. She reached for her robe on the bed, but he took it from her hands. Val turned, watching him pull the fur from the bottom of the bed. He placed it on the floor, just in the spill of moonlight—under the window.
She padded over and joined him where he reclined. “This—suits you.” She eyed his brawn, sprawled on the fur; moonlight flattered him as much as sunlight.
Archard, on his side, heard but obviously had a preoccupied mind. He reached a hand up and touched her lips. “This is where I have to admit, that while I think of devouring you, making love to you, and I want to do that, over and over, in every variation. I have to admit—that having your mouth on me, what you were doing in there, can make me lose my head. Lose control.”
Val’s brow rose. Far from being distressed, she smiled.
Archard was too tense to smile, much too serious, in her opinion. She was starting to guess why.
He went on in low tones, “I’m not a selfish man. God knows, I want inside you this very moment. Nevertheless, I enjoy pleasure. I am as weak to it as anyone.”
“Archard—”She slowly sat up.
He added, “I should probably add that most wives do not…”
“Archard.” She leaned forward and touched his lips to shush him a moment. “I’ve been a wife to a selfish man, and I found no pleasure in any part of it. We have not been wed nor intimate long, but I assure you this, I want to pleasure you. Not because of duty, not because I am your wife, or that I think you have an expectation of it. I cannot put it into the right words, the intimate words, perhaps. But with you, I’m doing as I feel, as is pleasant, and pleasing, to me also.”
He covered her hand, lowered it and sat up too, holding that hand now on his thigh.
Val murmured, “Perhaps all lovers are different about kisses, touches, intimacy. How can one know how to please or what pleases the other? I enjoy everything you do, and something in me hungers to make you feel that too. You must guide me…”
“Val. Val...” He reached his free hand over and pulled her, so that she found herself in his embrace, kneeling between his spread knees.
Archard kissed her cheek, her brow, and husked, “I underestimated you, woman. All that I have thought of is how to erase your pain, to show you pleasure and make love to you. I had not thought—I would find myse
lf taking from you this soon.”
“I do not see it that way.” She kissed his cheekbone.
Forehead against hers, his hand cupping her head, Archard murmured, “No man in his right mind would refuse what you offered me. Just your kiss, your touch on my skin, the bathing of me, set my blood raging. In short, yes. Just as you feel when I have my lips and mouth on you, I feel that too.”
Val lifted her head, forcing him to slide his hand down and rise up, so their eyes met. Visually, she skimmed over the structure of his bones, the light eyes and up to his mane. She again touched his gaze. She was wet. Her nipples were tight, skin sensitized. Val deduced that seeing him aroused did that to her. Thinking that she could make him feel half the overwhelming pleasure she did when he gave to her, made her body react.
“I’m not afraid anymore. You have shown me— made me feel incredible bliss.” Her fingers touched his bottom lip. “Let us be lovers. Equal, as we are in everything else. I am a woman, Archard. Perhaps once I was wounded. Perhaps—I have things to work through. Nevertheless, I am a whole woman, now. I like it that you do not treat me as if I am somehow…not normal. I want you to know that.”
He closed his lashes for seconds, and then slowly parted them. Pushing her hand down, he pulled her to him and kissed her, deep, passionate and long.
Val let him take her with him when he went back again, her body over his while they kissed, heads moving, tongues tasting, delving, and bodies suddenly electric with raw sexual heat.
Kissing, repeatedly, they rolled several times, hands grasping hair or moving over bodies, hips, buttocks, and backs. Breathing tense and dark, they began to suckle, to bite and lave, act out a sexual and erotic love play, mouth to mouth. His hands on her were firm when skimming, grasping, holding, and possessively sensual. Val arched, rubbed, and moved while lightly raking her nails down his back, or reaching to caress his thigh, or up to tangle her fingers in his hair.
No sound invaded save the breath from their lungs, scorching and thick, sexually excited. No scent save the heated herb soap on their skin, and having mingled, pores open, and that mesh of male/female aroma,--desire.
His thick thigh pushed up, caressing her sex, Val’s hips moved against the hot, hard, length of his. On his back, on hers, on their sides, they tangled and skimmed, kissed like lovers, no tutor, no one leading or following. It was an intense mesh, melding, meeting, of two aroused and desirous people. The senses open, arousal much too high and fierce, to be aware of neither the world, nor anything save each other.
With Archard on his back once more, Val used the advantage to lave and bite his neck, then sensually drag her lips across his collarbone and down his chest. His hands in her hair, she felt intoxicated, lust drugged, and every taste of his skin heightened that. She played at his nipples and made those abdomen muscles ripple by kissing and biting her way to his blond curls.
When she raised her head and positioned, she began to tease his sex with her tongue again, watching him arch up, hearing his harsh release of breath. Caught up in laving, finally rimming it again with her lips and suckling, she merely grunted when he half sat and pulled her hips to the side, where he could reach and touch her.
Val moaned, long and low. His hand skimmed between her buttocks, caressing there for some time, then found her entry. He wet his fingers in her silken heat, slid them up to rub between the lips, several times going from thrusting them deep inside her, rubbing the slick walls and out, to those nerves.
Eyes rolling back, lashes closing, she devoured him with suckles and laves, moving her head as the pleasure from his touch rolled through her body.
He grew more aggressive touching her. Somewhere in her sexual fog, she realized his climax was nearing too. Her thighs trembled, breath panted out her nostrils. Wet did not begin to describe the sensations under his fingers. Inner muscles contracted, begged for it, blood surged to the point of his gilding fingertips.
Archard put a hand to her forehead, a trembling one, gently lifting her off him. Half-sitting he positioned his pulsing sex between her full breasts. His seed pumped out amid groans and shudders, a clinch teethed sucking in of air from him.
Fascinated by that, by him, Val found herself pulled up, astride his mouth—then not a thought more while he laved her through an intense climax.
* * * *
They pan bathed and rolled the fur back on the bed. Val lay across the bottom, on her stomach, observing him as he smoked near the window. The candles doused. He was a moonlit shadow there. A study of nude male perfection in the full-size variety.
Her mouth was swollen, tender, but not unpleasantly so, from all the kissing and love play. They had laughed quietly whilst putting salve on each other’s lips after the bath. They were doing an awful lot of kissing, biting, and laving.
He tapped out the pipe and turned, padding to the mantle. Archard came to bed, but did so by covering her back, half lying, half crouched. Elbows beside her own, he kissed her hair and confessed, “I want you.”
She arched her backside up and spread her legs. She was wet the moment his skin had touched her.
He eased down, fitting his legs between hers and spreading them wider. His sex filled her achingly slow, but once he did, he began to thrust in and out in a downward, slanting, stroke, that had her moaning.
Val was surprised at how fast her blood flamed. She ended up moving to her knees. Archard nudged her to the edge of the bed so that he could stand, knees bent, holding her in front by the hips, and gliding in and out of her, doing his circular moves that brought her moans to a new level.
His climax was quiet, intense but quiet. They sighed, moaned in lazy pleasure, and shared a long kiss afterwards.
Chapter Nine
If anyone had told Val years ago, that she would ache for a man, she would have denied it until her last breath.
She ached for Archard.
It was not as if they were not together. They rode, and walked in the early mornings. They visited tenants as well as doing things separately.
Nevertheless, Val discovered many new feelings watching Archard. He would stand, spread legged, and arms crossed, listening to a groom or the steward intently. His laugh, ah… she loved it. His white teeth would flash, and the roar that came out of him was pure delight. Archard worked too. He could not stand merely using his brain. He was such a physical man. He did not mind rain, dew, or mud. He was earthy and intent on everything he applied himself to.
Of course, Val noticed, with the earlier intimacy, he began to reveal things to her. She liked the way he called her “woman” at times, and he was quite the flirt and tease, playful in a way that kept her from falling into a heavy muse.
On their walks, he had one morning pretended to vanish, and then jumped from behind a tree, making her scream and scold him, until his laughter got to her too. Once, while riding, his stud had nearly thrown him, he had praised the beast’s spirit and nearly gave her heart failure riding hell for leather down the road. He knew she could ride well and would catch up. She did, discovering that Archard admired her seat and encouraged her to do everything with freedom and lack of inhibition.
There was his coming up behind her in the herb garden, kissing her, tickling her, covered in sweat. It was not a thing a gentleman would do, but then, her man was all earthy male. If he wanted to kiss her, he found a way to do it.
She had always known he was intelligent, and his conversation alone revealed an amazing scope of knowledge. For all she had a superior education to many females, he put that to shame without trying. She found him fascinating too— because for all he knew, had experienced, and was worldly about, he was still curious.
Val sighed often those days, trying to laugh at herself for actually wanting to kiss him, to tumble into bed with him, simply because the man laughed—or when he washed in the rain barrel and came striding up shaking his hair like a great beast and his linen shirt plastered to him. They had needed the respite; their bodies did, as well as her emotions. Yet, it was not
that at all, for she no control over her desire either it seemed. Her attraction to him was multifaceted….
Val had found a spot in the garden to read this noon, preparing herself for the visit to Hawksmoor, always happy to see her family, yet blushing, wondering if the advances in her relationship with Archard would show. Her sisters would notice. She knew they would. What, she wondered; would she do if they teased her?
She realized now that intimacy was strength in Edmund and Alex’s marriage. It was what Jo longed for. It was something her father certainly knew a bit about.
Chewing her lip, the book on a bench by her side, Val breathed in the scent of blossoms, a nice breeze teasing her half-drawn up hair, and fluttering the hem of her gown. She was so in a muse that Archard was nearly down the path before the sound of his boots on the crushed stone penetrated. Val turned, watching him advance, noting he had on his buttery leather trousers and good riding boots, a linen shirt.
“Would you mind joining your father at Hawksmoor, a day early?” Was what he said upon reaching her?
“No. Of course not. What’s amiss?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head. “I will have to escort you and then leave.” He shrugged. “I received word that my cousin Ingrid will be arriving in Liverpool. I had intended for Aric to fetch her, but I have missed him. He departed the Inn he was staying in, and his note to me was delayed. In fact, I received both missives an hour ago. Aric is headed to London…”
“Of course. You must go fetch her. Do take her on to London. We will depart in a three days at the most. It will give the two of you time to visit, and you must show her more of the city than ballrooms.” Val stood, collecting her book. “Is she a Lady of fashion, do you know?”
“Ingrid?” He laughed. “No. Though, she is an heiress. She doubtless has a rich wardrobe, or did, before she stood up to the elders and decided to run the family homestead alone. She proved her point well.”
He turned with her and they walked back to the house. “Ingrid, as I recall her, and she was a mere girl last I remember—defiantly telling all who would listen that she had every right to refuse an arranged marriage and… she was quite like Jo, save that instead of thumbing her nose at society, she did it to a much tougher assembly—our family. She’s a Struchen, cousin by way of Cousins Rothstein, but also her father’s sister wed a Van Wyc, and we have some other relatives in common.”